7 Ways to Overcome Athletic Stress

Some parents unintentionally become a source of stress to young athletes. How does this occur? All parents identify with their children to some extent and want them to do well. Unfortunately, in some  cases, the degree of identification becomes excessive making the child an extension of the parent. When this happens, parents begin to define their own self-worth in terms of their player’s successes or failures. This means the child must succeed or the parent’s self-image is threatened. When parental love and approval depends on how well the child performs, sports are bound to be stressful.

What can parents do to help combat competitive anxiety?
One of the great benefits of sports is that the consequences of failure are temporary and unlikely to have a long-term impact on the future of a child. This places you in an ideal position to help your young athlete develop healthy attitudes about achievement and an ability to tolerate failure and setbacks when they occur. Remind your player that doing the very best should always be the focus and the goal and that winning will take care of itself. The only thing that can be directly controlled is effort.

Here are some specific attitudes that you can communicate to your child:

1. Sports should be fun – Emphasize that sports and other activities in life are enjoyable whether you win or lose. Athletes should be participating, first and foremost, to have fun. Try to raise your child to enjoy many activities that winning is not a condition for enjoyment.
2. Anything worth achieving is rarely easy - In particular, the mastery of sport skills is a long and difficult process. Becoming the best athlete is not an achievement to be had merely for the asking. Practice, practice, and still more practice is needed to master any sport.
3. Mistakes are a necessary part of learning anything – Very simply, if we don’t make mistakes, we probably won’t learn. Emphasize that mistakes are stepping stones to achievement. They give us the information we need to adjust and improve. The only true mistake is a failure to learn from our experiences.
4. Effort is what counts – Emphasize and praise effort as well as outcome. Communicate repeatedly to your young athlete that all you ask is that they give total effort. Through your actions and your words, show your child that he or she is just as important to you when trying and losing as when winning. Above all, do not punish or withdraw love and approval when your player doesn’t perform up to expectations. It is such punishment that builds fear of failure.
5. Do not confuse worth with performance – Help youngsters distinguish what they do from who they are. It is a valuable for children to learn that they should never identify their worth as people with any particular part of themselves. You can further this process by demonstrating your own ability to accept your child unconditionally as a person, even when you are communicating that you don’t approve of some behavior.
6. Pressure is something you put on yourself – Help your young athlete to see competitive situations as exciting self-challenges rather than as threats. Emphasize that they can choose how to think about pressure situations. These attitudes will help develop an outlook on pressure that makes it a challenge and opportunity to test themselves and achieve something worthwhile.
7. Try to like and respect sport opponents - Some coaches and athletes think that proper motivation comes from anger or hatred for the opposition. Athletics should promote sportsmanship and an appreciation for friendly competition. Sport opponents are not the “enemy.” They are fellow athletes who make it possible to compete. Hatred only breeds stress and fear.

Tom Osborne, former University of Nebraska football coach, emphasized respect for the opponent because, in his experience, “Athletes who play in a generally relaxed environment where there’s good will toward their opponents are less fearful and play better.” When children learn to enjoy sports for their own sake, when their goal becomes to do their best rather than be the best and when they avoid the trap of defining their self-worth in terms of their performance or the approval of others, their way of viewing themselves and their world helps prevent stress. Such children are success oriented rather than focused on failure-avoidance.

Editor’s Note: For more information please refer to the Minnesota Hockey Sports and Your Child booklet.